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Monday, April 25, 2016

School Days Are Fun Days

With our internet being out last week I didn't update about school so this week's post will cover the past two weeks.

Each day in language we do phonics drills. We practice writing the alphabet everyday and vocabulary words also. We play games such as Word O (sight word bingo), Go Fish (with the alphabet and alphabet sounds), and Memory (matching words and pictures). He loves games! We sing a few phonics songs from our curriculum CD. We spend a lot of time reading. I read several short books to them and Cruz reads something everyday.

Here he is doing a phonics drill to the Ferris Wheel Song. We sing this song twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

We covered three new readers in the past two weeks. Our focus was on short vowel "o".

new storybooks he read

A page from the inside of Bob and Spot. He has two of these type books with each short vowel. He loves getting to color the pictures before reading.

This was his fourth kindergarten storybook reader. He has one of these books for each vowel. He looks forward to getting these and enjoys reading them. He gets a new one every three weeks. They are cute and colorful. When he can read it well he gets to pick something from the treasure box.

A short video of him reading. My camera battery died right in the middle of it.

We are spending the last few weeks of school reviewing in Math. I made a list of all the things we need to cover, divided them into five days, and made a schedule of what topics to do each day.

We made this clock from our Abeka Art for K5 book and use it when reviewing telling time.

reviewing place value

We travel to a village for Bible study every Wednesday morning so our school schedule gets shifted around that day. I am usually up and going by 5:30 to have enough time to do everything I need to do before we leave. Since Cruz is an early riser I try to squeeze in his math lesson that morning while I am cooking breakfast. He will sit at the kitchen table and get it done usually with little or no complaints. We do our other subjects in the afternoon when we get back home. It is a long day for me!

Cruz doing math at the kitchen table on a recent Wednesday morning.

Science is not required for kindergarten but I am so glad I added it in this year. It is usually the last thing we do each day and as I have often said it is like the icing on our cake. Our lessons are so fun and the boys love them. We are doing Exploring Science by Elemental Science. It is really a fun curriculum for little ones.

We are in the middle of a unit about motion. Our last two topics were on potential energy and spinning.

When studying stored/ potential energy we made this paper "elf" for an experiment called Flying Elf.

We were supposed to use a detergent bottle for the experiment but I didn't have an empty one so instead we used an empty water gun. I think my boys liked that better anyway, ha. We put the elf on top and then blasted it into the air.

oh what fun they had!

We used the same water gun another day that week to do an experiment called Painting with Energy. I put drops of paint on his page and he used the air from the gun to blow it around.

Our second topic, spinning, was just as fun. We started the week by making spinners out of cardboard and toothpicks.

coloring their spinners

Testing to see which ones spun the best.

Another experiment we did was called Top Tracks. We cut a hole in a plastic yogurt container lid and put a marker in it. He spun the marker and made a beautiful art sheet.

His page when he finished. I thought it looked cool.

We ended the week in Science by watching a Magic School Bus episode called "Magic School Bus Spins a Web". They love those videos! We also watched several videos recently on YouTube by "Science For Kids". It is a father and son and they are very entertaining. My boys ask often to watch them. This particular video below on potential energy they have watched several times-

Our recent Bible lessons were on Zacchaeus, Mary Shows Her Love for Jesus, Mary and Martha, The Raising of Lazarus, and The Triumphal Entry. We are doing the Easter story again using our curriculum this time as the lessons fall into order. One of our sweet team members, Mrs. Anne, had sent the boys an Easter story book to do with our lessons. Since I did other activities for the actual Easter week I saved the books to do when we covered the stories again. She sent similar books for the Christmas story and we love them. My boys especially love putting the stickers on the stories each day.

A fun book we are using to help us learn the Easter story.

Cruz adding stickers to his book when we did the Triumphal Entry story.

Our new Bible songs were "All Things Bright and Beautiful", "Bubbling in my Soul" (our favorite), and "God Has Blotted Them Out". Our memory verses were Psalm 56:3 and 2 Peter 1:4. Below are videos of Cruz saying each of those (and being silly in the process).

As an extra daily writing assignment I started him a notebook and am having him write one memory verse a day in it. We started with his verse for letter A and will continue until we get to letter Z. It is handwriting practice, memory verse review, and a great keepsake for me to have from his kindergarten year.

a few of his memory verses from this year written in his notebook

We have a set of alphabet stickers that he gets to put at the top of each page.

Here are a few art things he did lately-

he loves to draw

We usually spend our evenings reading a chapter book. I mixed that up a bit recently and instead we went through the video series of the Sugar Creek Gang. There are five videos in all and my boys love them.

So, that's how we have spent the last two weeks of school. Looks fun, huh? I love getting to be their teacher. It's not just about what they are learning but more about the time that we are spending together while doing it. These are some fun, precious years!